Odor associated memories are not necessarily highly emotional

Laboratory and clinical studies have shown that odors tend to evoke highly emotional autobiographical memories that frequently come from an early period in life. One potential explanation for this effect is that all memories associated with odors are particularly emotional, while another potential explanation is that the presence of an (emotional) odor during retrieval leads to the participants' impression that the retrieved memory is particularly emotional. To this point, nearly all research on odor evoked autobiographical memories has relied on the presence of an odor to cue the memory, a procedure that does not allow one to distinguish whether the emotionality of the memories is due to the memory itself or the presence of the current cue. In contrast, in the current studies, no stimuli were presented during the retrieval of autobiographical memories. Instead, we asked people to report on memories specifically associated with the five traditional different senses or asked for information about autobiographical memories evoked throughout the day and assessed the role of the senses in those experienced memories. Across the three studies, using slightly different methodologies, we found that odor associated autobiographical memories are not more emotional or older than memories (mainly) associated with other modalities. Our results carefully put into question the notion that odor associated autobiographical memories are more emotional than autobiographical memories mostly associated with other modalities. Since the difference between the presented and previous studies lies in a different situation at AM retrieval, these results present evidence towards retrieval-based explanations.